Earth At Risk, sponsored by Fertile Ground Institute in November 2014, featured many of today’s most important activists and thinkers in environmentalism, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, radical feminism, and anti-racism. With keynote speakers Derrick Jensen, Alice Walker, Vandana Shiva, Chris Hedges, and Thomas Linzey; plus multiple panels, the event was full of insightful and inspiring discussions.

Will Falk wrote a report-back on the event: Earth At Risk 2014: The Proper Diagnosis. Until now his writeup was the only way to experience the event vicariously for those of us who missed it, but Fertile Ground just made all 12 hours of the presentations available.

View the videos below, or visit our member appearances page and enter “earth at risk” into the filter box to browse only the presentations involving DGR members. You can also download audio files of those panels and keynotes.

Three members of DGR Lower Columbia attended the September 17, 2013, EIS hearing for construction of a coal terminal. The DGR members voiced radical opposition, by recognizing the uselessness of protesting in the ways permitted by the system, and explicitly supporting anyone who takes matters into their own hands to carry out strategic, militant attacks against industrial infrastructure.

This sort of public advocacy for underground resistance is crucial, and something anyone can do at a local level.

A DGR member reported back on the event:

“Ambre energy wants to ship coal from Montana and Wyoming to markets in Asia. A $643 million Millenium Bulk Terminals dock has been proposed to make this transfer possible.

The hearing in Longview (one of 5 happening in WA) is a step in the EIS process to ensure that “all opinions on this topic are heard and taken into account”. The panel included one representative from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, one from Cowlitz County, and one from the Department of Ecology as well as a scribe. Knowing that our words would have no impact on the EIS itself, we were hoping to reach the protesting activists in the room (you’ll notice our members politely ignoring the MC’s efforts to make us face the panel).

The audience was comprised of two opposing parties: those in the blue and those in the red (think Democrats and Republicans reversed). Blue was worn by Millenium supporters largely arguing that Longview needs the jobs offered by the construction and operation of the terminal. Red was worn by Beyond Coal activists concerned about local and global environmental impacts of the coal industry. For three hours we listened to speakers from both sides chosen through a lottery to convey a two-minute opinion.

Particularly poignant was a speech given right at the beginning by an indigenous man. He argued against bringing the coal industry to Longview for the jobs it might create, by comparing the situation to a bartender who keeps selling alcohol to an obviously drunk man just because he needs the money, or to parents buying their children drugs and alcohol because “they’re gonna get their hands on it anyway.” Another man argued loudly against the “advantage” of bringing new industry to Longview by reminding us of the booming economy in Germany when they were building Auschwitz.

Our own speeches were met with mixed reactions. I heard people complaining next to me that extremism hinders the cause and that these hearings do make an impact. But we also noticed wide smiles on the faces of a few in the audience. And Travis’ parting words were met with cheers and applause. By the end, Charles was busy collecting email addresses and it was clear our message reached at least a few new ears.

Who knows what the outcome of the coal terminal argument will be? But if we got some more people to understand the severity of our situation and the action that is actually necessary to save the planet, I’ll deem the excursion a success and these hearings worthwhile.

The triumph of the pornographers is a victory of power over justice,
cruelty over empathy, and profits over human rights. I could make that
statement about Walmart or McDonalds and progressives would eagerly
agree. We all understand that Walmart destroys local economies, a
relentless impoverishing of communities across the US that is now
almost complete. It also depends on near-slave conditions for workers in
China to produce the mountains of cheap crap that Walmart sells. And
ultimately the endless growth model of capitalism is destroying the
world. Nobody on the left claims that the cheap crap that Walmart produces equals freedom. Nobody defends Walmart by saying that the
workers, American or Chinese, want to work there. Leftists understand
that people do what they have to for survival, that any job is better than
no job, and that minimum wage and no benefits are cause for a revolution, not a defense of those very conditions. Likewise McDonalds. No
one defends what McDonalds does to animals, to the earth, to workers,
to human health and human community by pointing out that the people
standing over the boiling grease consented to sweat all day or that hog
farmers voluntarily signed contracts that barely return a living. The issue
does not turn on consent, but on the social impacts of injustice and hierarchy, on how corporations are essentially weapons of mass destruction. Focusing on the moment of individual choice will get us nowhere.

The problem is the material conditions that make going blind in a
silicon chip factory in Taiwan the best option for some people. Those
people are living beings. Leftists lay claim to human rights as our
bedrock and our north star: we know that that Taiwanese woman is not
different from us in any way that matters, and if going blind for pennies and no bathroom breaks was our best option, we would be in grim circumstances.

And the woman enduring two penises shoved up her anus? This is
not an exaggeration or “focusing on the worst,” as feminists are often
accused of doing. “Double-anal” is now standard fare in gonzo porn, the
porn made possible by the Internet, the porn with no pretense of a plot,
the porn that men overwhelmingly prefer. That woman, just like the
woman assembling computers, is likely to suffer permanent physical
damage. In fact, the average woman in gonzo porn can only last three
months before her body gives out, so punishing are the required sex
acts. Anyone with a conscience instead of a hard-on would know that
just by looking. If you spend a few minutes looking at it—not masturbating to it, but actually looking at it—you may have to agree with Robert Jensen that pornography is “what the end of the world looks like.”

By that I don’t mean that pornography is going to bring about
the end of the world; I don’t have apocalyptic delusions. Nor
do I mean that of all the social problems we face, pornography
is the most threatening. Instead, I want to suggest that if we
have the courage to look honestly at contemporary pornography, we get a glimpse—in a very visceral, powerful
fashion—of the consequences of the oppressive systems in
which we live. Pornography is what the end will look like if we
don’t reverse the pathological course that we are on in this
patriarchal, white-supremacist, predatory corporate-capitalist
society. . . . Imagine a world in which empathy, compassion,
and solidarity—the things that make decent human society
possible—are finally and completely overwhelmed by a self-
centered, emotionally detached pleasure-seeking. Imagine
those values playing out in a society structured by multiple
hierarchies in which a domination/subordination dynamic
shapes most relationships and interaction. . . . [E]very year my
sense of despair deepens over the direction in which pornography and our pornographic culture is heading. That despair is rooted not in the reality that lots of people can be cruel, or
that some number of them knowingly take pleasure in that
cruelty. Humans have always had to deal with that aspect of
our psychology. But what happens when people can no longer
see the cruelty, when the pleasure in cruelty has been so normalized that it is rendered invisible to so many? And what happens when for some considerable part of the male population of our society, that cruelty becomes a routine part of
sexuality, defining the most intimate parts of our lives?

All leftists need to do is connect the dots, the same way we do in
every other instance of oppression. The material conditions that men as
a class create (the word is patriarchy) mean that in the US battering is
the most commonly committed violent crime: that’s men beating up
women. Men rape one in three women and sexually abuse one in four
girls before the age of fourteen. The number one perpetrator of childhood sexual abuse is called “Dad.” Andrea Dworkin, one of the bravest women of all time, understood that this was systematic, not personal.
She saw that rape, battering, incest, prostitution, and reproductive
exploitation all worked together to create a “barricade of sexual terrorism” inside which all women are forced to live. Our job as
feminists and members of a culture of resistance is not to learn to eroticize those acts; our task is to bring that wall down.

In fact, the right and left together make a cozy little world that
entombs women in conditions of subservience and violence. Critiquing
male supremacist sexuality will bring charges of being a censor and a
right-wing antifun prude. But seen from the perspective of women, the
right and the left create a seamless hegemony.

Gail Dines writes, “When I critique McDonalds, no one calls me
anti-food.” People understand that what is being critiqued is a set of
unjust social relations—with economic, political, and ideological components—that create more of the same. McDonalds does not produce generic food. It manufactures an industrial capitalist product for profit. The pornographers are no different. The pornographers have built a
$100 billion a year industry, selling not just sex as a commodity, which
would be horrible enough for our collective humanity, but sexual cruelty. This is the deep heart of patriarchy, the place where leftists fear to tread: male supremacy takes acts of oppression and turns them into sex. Could there be a more powerful reward than orgasm?

And since it feels so visceral, such practices are defended (in the rare
instance that a feminist is able to demand a defense) as “natural.” Even
when wrapped in racism, many on the left refuse to see the oppression
in pornography. Little Latina Sluts or Pimp My Black Teen provoke not
outrage, but sexual pleasure for the men consuming such material. A
sexuality based on eroticizing dehumanization, domination, and hierarchy will gravitate to other hierarchies, and find a wealth of material in
racism. What it will never do is build an egalitarian world of care and
respect, the world that the left claims to want.

On a global scale, the naked female body—too thin to bear live
young and often too young as well—is for sale everywhere, as the
defining image of the age, and as a brutal reality: women and girls are
now the number one product for sale on the global black market.
Indeed, there are entire countries balancing their budgets on the sale
of women. Is slavery a human rights abuse or a sexual thrill? Of what
use is a social change movement that can’t decide?

We need to stake our claim as the people who care about freedom,
not the freedom to abuse, exploit, and dehumanize, but freedom from
being demeaned and violated, and from a cultural celebration of that
violation.

This is the moral bankruptcy of a culture built on violation and its
underlying entitlement. It’s a slight variation on the Romantics, substituting sexual desire for emotion as the unmediated, natural, and
privileged state. The sexual version is a direct inheritance of the
Bohemians, who reveled in public displays of “transgression, excess,
sexual outrage.” Much of this ethic can be traced back to the Marquis
de Sade, torturer of women and children. Yet he has been claimed as
inspiration and foundation by writers such as “Baudelaire, Flaubert,
Swinburne, Lautréamont, Dostoevski, Cocteau, and Apollinaire” as well
as Camus and Barthes. Wrote Camus, “Two centuries ahead of
time . . . Sade extolled totalitarian societies in the name of unbridled
freedom.” Sade also presents an early formulation of Nietzsche’s will
to power. His ethic ultimately provides “the erotic roots of fascism.”

Once more, it is time to choose. The warnings are out there, and it’s
time to listen. College students have 40 percent less empathy than they
did twenty years ago. If the left wants to mount a true resistance, a
resistance against the power that breaks hearts and bones, rivers and
species, it will have to hear—and, finally, know—this one brave sentence
from poet Adrienne Rich: “Without tenderness, we are in hell.”

In late April, I participated in Direct Action Spokane’s first public event and a strategy meeting regarding the blocking of coal/oil/gas trains in the northwest. The public event consisted of four presentations and a Q&A session. The presenters included myself, Jackie Minchew and Mike Lapointe of the Delta 5, and Ken Ward of the Climate Disobedience Center. DAS’s goal for the event was to make direct action and breaking the law more palatable of an option for community members in Spokane, specifically around blocking coal/oil/gas trains running through the city. Jackie, Mike, and Ken talked about their actions and I filled in with examples from historical movements of the precedent for direct action. There were approximately 70-80 people in attendance, and the event was quite successful.

The following morning DAS called a private meeting to talk about strategy and how successful resistance against these trains might look. We discussed different ways to block the tracks, legal support, fundraising, constructing a narrative of resistance, being prepared for the aftermath in terms of knowing what to do with people who wish to join the struggle in Spokane or in the larger northwest, creating the conditions for a succession of blockades, and the possibility of coordinated action on the same rail line in a different location.

Some good connections were made in Spokane. Ken Ward expressed interest in working together and wanted to know how DGR and Climate Disobedience Center can complement each other. The Delta 5 people were unfamiliar with DGR but seemed eager to bring our name and strategy back to Everett, WA.

Agent Orange is connected to the 25% of Veterans testing positive for Diabetes 2 per the VA’s own website–the general population is at 8–10%. (As soon as you are diagnosed through the VA with Diabetes 2, the second question is “to your knowledge, were you ever exposed to Agent Orange?” So the VA is well aware of this connection).

50% of our general population will get cancer during their lifetime or have it already. And this directly affects all of us as many of us have loved ones with cancer or know someone that has died from it. Those of us who got our diagnosis already are working hard at staying alive. We will live the rest of our lives constantly detoxing. Some of us who are veterans have both cancer and diabetes and both conditions are connected to the use of Agent Orange and other Monsanto chemicals per the VA’s own website. We have probably been poisoned.

The important thing to note about these reports is that the IARC, a World Health Organization working group of doctors published their findings last year showing that Roundup’s Glyphosate “probably causes cancer.” Their report was posted on the LANCET website last year. Immediately after the report was published, Monsanto demanded a retraction of the IARC’s findings but they never got it.

From March Against Monsanto: “In a recent article by EcoWatch, it was revealed that the EPA had finally released its long-awaited report on the WHO declaration, only to mysteriously pull it from circulation.”

These are ways that corporate media, news outlets and government agencies censor, omit or create a critical buzz regarding information and attempt to keep it from those who need it most; like journalists, victims and medical workers. And of course to cover up the crimes by the corporations and any possibility of them being held accountable.

Other alarming trends and side effects of the regular use of these toxins include the killing off of our pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, and birds. Some of these populations are now collapsing. We are already losing approximately 200 species a day due to extinction. Without the pollinators, we will not be able to sustain our current food supplies.

Many questions need to be raised about the continued use of these toxins. Roundup is the one most widely used in the US, despite being banned in many other countries.

“This planet is Gaia because of her evolutionary adaptive capacity. The only question to ask is, ‘Will human beings be around in that adaptive context?’”

Labeling GMOs or genetically modified organisms in our food products and produce is the other reason why we march. I believe at the very least companies should be accurately labeling them. March Against Monsanto calls for two events a year: in May and October. The events are to increase awareness about the need for labeling food that contains GMO’s. This would give the consumers all of the information they need to know so they can make educated choices for themselves and their families.

I want to take it a step further. I call for a permanent ban on Roundup and other similar agro-chemicals, and a boycott of anyone that is using them. We are literally marching for our lives. Who is with me?

Upcoming Events

We march everywhere on the globe Saturday, May 21st, 2016. Join us as we march for the right to not be poisoned anymore.

I woke up this morning to find my social media feed awash with David Bowie mourners, with too many articles on the subject to count. His death also featured on TV stations and the airwaves. Bowie is an icon within the industry of 20th and 21st century capitalism, arguably unmatched in terms of following, creativity and cultural impact. He undeniably had great talent. But, how can this culture place such disproportionate emphasis on the death of one man, relative to far more pressing issues?

The spectacle of this culture covers up a greater state of loss, with not even a tiny fraction of the attention paid to Bowie’s death given to matters of planetary life and death. These are just a few of the environmental and technology articles I found today with repercussions far greater than those from the death of one celebrity, no matter how popular:

Plans to build 450 huge hydroelectric dams in the Amazon, Meking and Congo could have a drastic effect on biodiversity, with a potential loss of 1/3 of this planets fresh water fish population.

Our cultural focus is a complete and utter disaster. The cultural spectacle leaves us increasingly distracted, while our world falls apart and we trust our fate to those who profit from the disintegration.

Personally, I feel a lot like Lisa Simpson in The Simpsons Movie, when she says “This town is just one piece of trash away from a toxic nightmare! But I knew you wouldn’t listen. So I took the liberty of pouring water from the lake in all your drinking glasses!”, to which Moe responds with “See, this is why we should hate kids!” But this isn’t a cartoon. Neither Lisa Simpson, David Bowie, nor even Spider-Pig will stop this culture and the world it is creating. We need to take on the responsibility, and resist in whatever ways we can.

Michael gave a talk at this year’s annual DGR conference on the subject of overcoming alienation, quoting some pertinent passages from The Sorcerer of Bolinas Reef by Charles Reich. He elaborates on those thoughts here.

What is alienation, how did we become afflicted with it, and how do we unlearn it? Alienation is created when you are being systematically undervalued, abused, and traumatized. We have all been undervalued from the day we were born. We are taught not only to expect less out of ourselves, but to expect less out of other people and also to undervalue the non-human part of nature.

Alienation gets built up layer by layer over the years through a process of false conditioning, which can get into your consciousness without your being aware that it is happening. The process of alienation is a learned thing, and so it can be unlearned. You can unlearn on your own, but it’s easier and faster if you have the help of others to facilitate the unlearning process. All you have to do is first decide that you are going to do this, and then find other like minded people, and form an affinity group that focuses on personal growth and real community.

The earth’s survival is the number one priority and needs to be our main focus, but there must be an emphasis placed on fundamental personal growth too. If you engage in this part of the revolution, it will not only improve your own lives, but make you a better activist and help guard against burnout.

Reich’s book is a great educational tool that will help you to learn more how alienation works, and it has countless insights as to how to unlearn it. The way to read the book is to read 8 to 10 pages at a time, set it down and think critically about what you’ve read, and then read the next 8 to 10 pages. By reading it this way you will hopefully begin to comprehend the whole difficult concept of alienation.